(now how much do you wanna bet some fool comes out and claims this is a flagrant violation of Yemen's national sovereignty and some kind of pre-election dirty trick by the Bush administration?)

CIA drone blasts car carrying al-Harthi, 5 others

SAN'A, Yemen, Nov. 4 — Six al-Qaida suspects were killed, including a top operative of Osama bin Laden, when their car was blasted with a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone in northwest Yemen, U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday.

U.S. OFFICIALS told NBC News that Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, a senior al-Qaida member, was among the dead.

According to NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski, the car had been observed by the drone — an unmanned aircraft — for a period of time before it was attacked on Sunday.

Secondary explosions were seen after the missile hit the vehicle, indicating there were explosives inside the car. Officials said they don’t know what the explosives were or why they were in the vehicle.

A U.S. government official told NBC the other five people in the car were associates of al-Harthi, who was the “centerpiece” in the vehicle.

Officials added that while this operation was carried out by the CIA, which controls the Predator drones that have been looking for al-Qaida in the Yemeni desert, the Yemen government was aware of the CIA action.

COLE ATTACK

Earlier Monday, a Yemeni Interior Ministry source, cited by the local news agency, described al-Harthi as a key suspect in the attack on the USS Cole two years ago.

U.S. officials have said it is unclear whether he was directly involved in the attack, in which 17 seamen were killed.

However, as a senior al-Qaida member in Yemen, it is believed that he was involved in some way, but he is not believed to have organized and planned the attack, one official said.

The Interior Ministry source said traces of explosives, ammunition, weapons and communication systems were found in the vehicle, which was destroyed in the explosion.